How are agriculture and manufacturing sector looking in the GDP estimates announced by the government?

The National Statistical Office of the MOSPI announced the first advance estimates (AE) for FY22 GDP at 9.2% late on Friday 07-January. This figure is lower than the RBI estimates of 9.5% for FY22. However, the underlying story is that the overall growth in most of the sectors is now back to above the pre-COVID levels of growth that we last got to see in the fiscal year 2019-20 and that is the good news.

Let us look at agriculture first. Agriculture was one sector that was not impacted by the pandemic and it continued to grow in the last two years on a positive note. Even other aspects of agriculture like dairy farming, horticulture and aquaculture also showed good positive growth over last 2 years. Manufacturing recovered and was up 4.4% over FY20, i.e. over the pre-COVID period, showing real recovery in manufacturing too.

The largest component of GDP is the services space. Under services, almost all the service groups like public services and construction showed good growth while financial services managed to show tepid growth. However, trade, hotels and transport being high contact intensive business is still showing negative growth of -9% over FY20. However, overall GDP, based on the AE is showing positive growth over FY20, showing COVID neutralized.